Enjoy the world
The world is a spectacle given by reality for my enjoyment.
The world is a series of textures designed to caress me.
Enjoy the world as a spectacle. Watch other people's emotions and frames with amused mastery, as an outside observer above them. Their petty conflicts and troubles don't affect you. As far as society is concerned, you're an anthropologist on an alien planet. (see Delusion Damage, "Open Your Alien Eyes")
Be bold
Tomorrow, do you want to be the guy who opened, or the guy who didn't?
– John Ryder
What do you regret more, sets you opened or sets you didn't? Approach anxiety is irrational. What's the worst that could happen? You die. A bit sooner than planned. That's it. And that's a very unlikely outcome for a simple open. Most people are more scared of speaking in public than dying. Realize how stupid that is.
Start
The first one is expensive, the rest are free.
– John Ross
Even if opening the first set is hard, the rest will be easy. It can only get easier. Likewise beyond pick-up.
Get in a positive loop
When I get sad I stop being sad and be AWESOME instead. True story!
– Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother
Smiling is a reason to smile. Get in a positive loop, not a negative one. Happiness is a default state. Happiness is forgetting to be unhappy.
Desire is a contract you make with yourself not to let yourself feel happy unless a specific set of conditions prevail. If you recognize yourself here, maybe it’s time for a new contract: maybe it’s time to decide that you will let yourself be happy no matter what happens in the external world.
– Delusion Damage
Be confident
Do, or do not. There is no try.
– Yoda
You don't have to be right, you have to be sure. Don't think, do. Don't overthink. Be and do. Don't hesitate. Three second rule. People, especially women, will assess your ideas based on how confident you are in laying them out, not based on rational analysis of their scientific accuracy.
Do it
Faking it is making it.
Pretending to be confident is equivalent to being confident, and will make you confident. The map is the territory: your display of confidence is your confidence. What is real is what you want to be real. You choose your reality and your role in it.
Act the way you want to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.
– Les Brown
You have to start living the life of the person you want to be.
– Bobbie Barrett, Mad Men
Reframe
If you don't like what is being said, change the conversation.
– Don Draper
Don't let other people set the frame. Don't apologize or justify yourself based on their worldview. Even if you are the only person in the world defending an idea, you're right, thus, everyone else is wrong, weird, abnormal, dumb, and should be justifying themselves, not you. Never, ever, accept a frame you don't like as your reality. You set your own frame. Live within your frame. Open from within your frame.
Compromises seem necessary only because of inappropriate situations. If you’re involved with the right people, the word “sacrifice” shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary.
– Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
If you don't like your current frame, ask yourself the question, Is this peer group worth impressing? and change the group, change the frame.
Be rational
Do you think that's air you're breathing now?
– Morpheus, The Matrix
You're only affected by what you let affect you. Breathing heavily didn't help Neo, because he was in The Matrix, thus whatever he was feeling was due entirely to his brain making him feel it. In the same way, no one or nothing can make you directly sad, unhappy, angry, annoyed. It goes through your brain. Thus, you are in exactly the same situation as Neo. Don't let irrational emotions get you down. Think crying will help? Think being depressed will help anything? Think being sad will bring back anything? Regrets are for Captain Hindsight (South Park) and his Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda penguins. The past and the future don't exist, only the present is real. Regrets are merely a form of indulging in self-pity. Don't spend time discussing what you can't change, whether it's the past or the future beyond your control. There's no point in breathing unless it's oxygen. There's no point in thinking about something unless you'll get something out of it.
Live
If you had one more day to live, would you want to spend it being afraid or would you want to spend it enjoying yourself? How about if you had 27,884 days?
– Delusion Damage
This is the first day of the rest of your life.
I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.
– Ayn Rand
If your life is infinite, enjoy every moment of it. If your life is finite, enjoy every moment of it. You could have died last year, month, or day. Every second you get from there on is a bonus to enjoy. To spend exactly the way you want to spend it.
Go for it
Why would you deny yourself something you want?
– Joy, Mad Men
If you want something, just ask. Often, wanting something and asking for it is enough to get it. Everything else are just shit tests to test if you really want it enough, if you're really confident enough in your desires. You weren't born to be a beta. Everything society throws at you is a shit test. If you want something, go for it.
Life doesn’t give us what we deserve. Life gives us what we go claim.
– Stephen Pierce
You are what you think about
– Earl Nightingale.
Do yourself a favor and learn to take yes for an answer.
– Breaking Bad
If you want something, you'll get it. Be ready to get it, and don't reject it once you get it. You might not get it the way you wanted it. You might not get it for the reasons you wanted to get it. You might not get it for the price you wanted to get it for. You might not want it anymore once you do get it. But get it you will.
Be free
But I don't think of you.
– Howard Roark
Never have your happiness depend on other people's thoughts or actions.
It all comes down to what I want versus what's expected of me.
– Fay Miller, Mad Men
What's expected of you is irrelevant. You are the center of your own life. Act accordingly.
by Trigger. trigger at inner-game.info